Born on March 1, 1925 in Bacau, graduated Magna cum Laude from the Bucharest Mathematics University, than honourific professor at the same university, Doctor Docent and correspondent member of the Academy, Solomon Marcus seems to need no presentation. And yet, how well do we know the world-famous Romanians?
“It’s easy to speak about a football player, as his performances are accessible to everyone and many persons are football fans. But how can one explain the performances of a mathematician to the public? The public should first understand what mathematics is all about. Mathematics as taught in schools fails to do it. Mathematics is always mistaken for something else – for accountability, statistics or logic, and lately for programming.
Many intellectuals question me whether there is something left to be discovered in mathematics. It is not their fault, but of the scientific education they have been given, which left them with the idea that this branch is a closed subject, lacking any questions that are waiting for an answer. The situation is the same today. At best, they learn about two or three problems (such as the Fermat problem) that had been a puzzle for a long time but were finally solved, but that’s all.
More disquieting is that not only common folks are ignoring the real nature of mathematics, but also a big portion of the intellectuality, the people of culture. Three or four months ago, when they granted the Award for excellence in Romanian culture, some observers stated their surprise at the presence of a mathematician among the nominees.
The argument? What does mathematics have to do with culture? I have seen they issued in “Ziarul de duminica” a presentation of a highly skilled mathematician. This is very good, but the text fails to elucidate the nature of his performance. This is the drama of communication between mathematicians and the world. Science grew complicated, its connection with reality became more and more indirect, the language of science and the concept of science itself have changed, while many men of culture still perceive it as it used to be back in the 18th-19th centuries.
We are far from the image of the scientist as a benefactor of mankind, as Louis Pasteur was considered. Given this situation, scientists may try to shorten the distance that separates them from the public, endeavouring to explain their concerns and results in an accessible language. Unfortunately, this happens very seldom. Scientists’ ability to escape from their own jargon and to start communicating with the world, and especially with the other men of culture, proved to be insufficient.
We should also notice that most journalists are humanists by formation, lacking the required competence to put up adequate dialogues with scientists or the wish to stimulate them to an interesting communication with the public. The very few TV discussions with scholars display superficiality. Iosif Sava was once confessing how difficult it was to open interesting discussions with them.
The Romanian education system has an extremely conservatory structure. An edifying example is the tie between mathematics and programming, on one hand, and linguistics, literature and arts, on the other. We are one of the few countries in Europe where universities do not have departments specialised in studying these connections. In the 60s, professors Moisil, Rosetti and Vianu agreed to set up such a department within the University of Romanian language and literature, but their initiative was blocked by younger colleagues, that is exactly by those that should have been the most open to the new.
The hesitating steps lately taken in this direction concern the use of programming and computers in services for the social-humanist field, and not at all a conceptual and methodological metabolism between the involved branches, as it should. Maybe these things will be solved in time, as the numerous young men returned from studies in the West will also enforce the new mentality in our country.